Judge blocks Pentagon blacklist of Anthropic as supply chain risk

Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic, during an interview on "The Circuit with Emily Chang" at Anthropic's headquarters in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, April 30, 2026.Jason Henry | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesA federal judge in California on Thursday ruled that the Pentagon's effort to blacklist Anthropic earlier this year violated the First Amendment and deprived the artificial intelligence company of its constitutionally protected liberties. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin vacated Anthropic's supply chain risk designation and declared that the Department of Defense's actions violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Lin directed the DOD to rescind all guidance, directives, communications or instructions that it issued against the company. "Defendants claim that because of Anthropic's 'increasingly hostile manner through the press' and its criticism of the Department of War's views on AI use, Defendants 'cannot trust Anthropic to ensure the integrity of its models,' " Lin wrote. "Neither the Constitution nor the federal statute invoked by Defendants allows them to impose sweeping penalties based principally on Anthropic's critique...